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pride.
    His mother's smile faltered at the edges.
    "If the Goddess truly loves me, I will sit by her side, and if not, I will sit in her place."
    That boy never saw his mother smile the same way again.
    "The Goddess would not have you," the voices taunted .
    "Her mistake," Donovan said, and though he tried to deny it, bitterness touched his words.
    He had loved the Goddess. As that boy, he had adored her and worshipped her. When he grew older, he yearned for her with the hunger of a man for a woman. When he felt the first tingling of his power, he thought it a gift from her, and would have laid it at her feet. Pride he inherited from his father, along with lands and title. It rankled him to see his father bend knee to the Emperor. Why should he? Birth and privilege alone separated his father from the Emperor.
    And power.
    The Emperor wielded more than even the Imperial Mages. The boy's father wielded none at all. Strength of arms, riches, command of men, none of that mattered. Physical power paled in comparison to what could be found in the ethereal.
    Gift of the Goddess? Perhaps. But one should be cautious to whom they bestowed their gifts.
    "I will see her fall."
     
    ***
     
    Donovan startled. He had been become unaware for a time, which, he supposed, passed for sleep in the vast nothingness he currently inhabited. He found it easier to ignore the creatures that surrounded him, to accept their endless obsession with his past. He had no aches here. No wants. He felt neither hot nor cold, no more so than he suffered hunger pains or thirst. He merely existed. A plaything for whatever held him.
    There had been pain. The Dominion priestess had once called the crone's power a curse, and so it had proven itself to be. Its sharp tines had dug into Donovan's consciousness with a ferocity that spoke of desperation, as though, even in death, the crone sought to destroy him. He tried to capture all the fragments of it, along with the scattered bits of his own self. Both futile tasks. Pain and anger slammed him between them for a time, and Donovan fought both.
    With no concept of time, he drifted, fighting a battle he could not win until forced to concede the point. He gave acceptance grudgingly. He lived. Or, at the very least, he existed. That meant, even now, the chance of vengeance on his enemies remained within his grasp.
    A gentle hand brushed the hair from his face. No, the boy's face, the boy he had been, because the creatures surrounding him were still intent on digging through the past.
    "Must we?" Donovan asked.
    "A mother's love could not save you," the voices said. "Love for the Goddess destroyed you."
    "Destroyed me? No. Say rather, created me. Her greatest accomplishment had she the wits to see it."
    "She turned from you. Shunned you."
    Donovan sighed. "I am weary of your chatter. What is it you hope to achieve?"
    "Your father is dead," that boy's mother told him in a voice shaking with loss and a touch of fear. Uncertainty, perhaps, for her future. For the boy's future.
    "I know." The boy showed little emotion. A single tear to mark the passing of a man who had denied his son nothing, yet left him only material wealth and position. He shed the tear, not so much from grief, as from disappointment. He had deserved a father more befitting what he would become. He should have been born the son of the Emperor.
    Would the Goddess have looked more kindly on him then? Would she have accepted him at her side? Looked on him as an equal instead of a fawning sycophant?
    "You desire her still."
    "Desire is a base and worthless emotion," Donovan said. "A weakness to be exploited by one's enemies."
    "You desire power."
    "I seek power."
    "You desire her."
    "Perhaps once. Now? I would sooner see her stretched across the veil, laid open to her enemies and devoured."
    "As I would seek the same for you."
    Donovan recognized this woman's voice instantly. He thought never to hear it again, though he felt no great surprise. It was likely no